"Activision will make Sierra its 'indie' label"

[kane_magus]

This doesn't make sense to me at all, on a semantic level. Being an arm of a gigantic corporate publisher is not "indie," at least not by any definition of the term that I understand, anyway. Also, aside perhaps from way back at the very beginning when it was just called On-Line Systems and consisted of Ken and Roberta Williams making games out of their home, Sierra was never "indie," either, so calling it such now is rather disingenuous.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I agree with you for the most part, although I'm assuming what they mean is that the Sierra arm will now be the branch of the corporate mass that will be talking/working with otherwise indie groups if such an indie group wishes to be published (or bought) by them.

Still, I'll agree it's a bad term to use anyway since imo as soon as they're being published by a large company, they stop being indie and start being "just another game dev to be later purchased and closed down at some point in the future."

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

I'd thought about that potentially being the case too as I was writing the post, but then one of the first games they announced was that King's Quest reboot shit, which isn't indie at all. Well, unless maybe they're getting the guys who made The Silver Lining to do it, but then, those guys (http://www.postudios.com/) are edging up on the point of not being able to be considered "indie" themselves these days. Or maybe they're getting one of the other indie (http://www.agdinteractive.com/) groups (http://www.infamous-adventures.com/home/) who have made King's Quest games in the past to do it. But if it's some in-house "Sierra" project, then, yeah, that's not indie, I don't think.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I think the group that'll actually be doing the kings quest reboot will be an indie group. ie: doing it with permission. Not sure if it's the same as the silver lining group or not however. Check the story you linked to about it, I'm pretty sure it indicated what exactly was going to happen there.

But even still, not really indie if they basically have the backing of a company.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yeah, it looks like the new King's Quest game is being made by some group called The Odd Gentlemen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Gentlemen). Never heard of them before. Well, in that case, irrespective of the whole "indie or not" issue, which I guess these guys are if you kind of squint and tilt your head, it's actually kind of odd that Activision is going with them, rather than one of the other groups I mentioned above who have already proven they're able to make decent King's Quest games (though I still have yet to play any of The Silver Lining because they still have yet to release the final episode and I refuse to get started playing it until the whole thing is released, so I don't personally know if that one actually counts as one of the "decent" ones).

Well, maybe I won't just dismiss this new King's Quest game out of hand like I probably otherwise would if it were just an in-house Activision cash-grab thing whoring out the Sierra name.